


Playing

by jacquelee



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Community: multifan_gift, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2841617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquelee/pseuds/jacquelee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few years after returning to Earth, Seven and Kathryn are living together and just welcomed a new member into their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



> Written for facethestrange for [Multifan_gift](http://multifan-gift.livejournal.com) at livejournal.

The sound of some very emphatic giggling and squeeing made Admiral Kathryn Janeway look up from her work. Normally she wouldn’t be phased by sounds like that, since they were very common in the Janeway household, seeing that their common room was shared by all members of the family, but today they had brought a new family member home and she wanted to see how they were doing. 

What she saw was what she expected, the three little girls laughing and rolling around the floor with the new kitten, who apparently had an affinity to climb on everything including the children and who was resting on Alex’s head right now, which caused the latter to squeal and Faro and Tiasa to giggle and try to coax the kitty away from her.  
Kathryn smiled broadly and looked around to meet her wife’s gaze. Seven was working on her own work station right next to her and from her expression, she had also just been looking for the source of the ruckus. They exchanged a knowing look and then both went back to their work. 

Still smiling, Kathryn’s thoughts drifted from her report to Starfleet to how lucky she was to have her family around her all the time. She theoretically had an office at Starfleet headquarters, but she nearly always worked at home. Seven also preferred to work at home, so most of the time, the whole family was together. 

Well, not the whole family, as Niana mostly preferred to work on homework or her writing in her own room, as she did right now, but it wasn’t like the twelve year old didn’t like playing with her younger sisters or the furry members of the family, she still spend a lot of time in the living room too. 

Concentrating on her report, Kathryn only looked up again when Seven got up and brushed her arm. 

“I am going to prepare dinner.” 

Kathryn nodded. 

“I’ll be finished in about an hour.” 

As usual, on her way to the kitchen, Seven stopped and crouched on the floor, engaging in the girl’s play. Kathryn watched her and as always was amazed by how natural it seemed to Seven to understand the children’s thoughts and participate in their play. She had always attributed it to her never having had the chance at a normal childhood and now gaining some of it back through her own children. 

Everything the girls did was just as fascinating to Seven as it was to the girls themselves because she experienced it for the first time. For the first time she was free to play, and it made Kathryn’s heart swell with joy every time to see that. To see her wife truly happy and regaining the life the Borg stole from her. 

Still smiling, Kathryn returned to her report, knowing that after dinner, she would join in with Seven and probably Niana too and they would all play until the girls were sleepy and needed to go to bed. It was her favourite part of the day. 

Trying to concentrate on her report, Kathryn’s thoughts still drifted away, thinking about her family, about how it all came to be. After coming back to Earth it was not a question that she and Seven would spend a lot of time together, especially since Alex was still so young, it had only been two years since they saved her and the other children from the Borg and she had only been an infant then. She and Seven were Alex’s primary caretakers and she wanted it to stay that way, but also, she wanted to stay close to Seven to help her adapt to  
life on Earth. 

At first they got separate quarters but she spent more time at Seven’s place than at her own and at some point she realized that it was more than just helping her, it was that she couldn’t even imagine her life without Seven. The Admiral had been right. She needed Seven, she needed her family. So she set aside her doubts and tried to bring up the topic of maybe at some point making their relationship official by marrying. 

She was met with a raised eyebrow and a little confusion from Seven, who had been under the impression that this was obviously the next logical step, not something that needed to be actually discussed. 

After that, they moved in together and settled into a comfortable routine. When Alex was getting a little older and it was more and more obvious that both of them enjoyed being parents very much, especially Seven, they were discussing the possibility of having more children, and since there were a lot of war orphans and other children left on Earth and elsewhere that needed loving homes, they decided to adopt. 

Niana and Faro were the first ones they adopted. The sisters had lost their family during the war and had been living on their own on one of the outer colonies before being brought into a foster home that used children as cheap labor force. Starfleet tried their best to discover all those organizations and shut them down, but after the war there was so much destruction and chaos everywhere, it took years to uncover everything.  
Seven had found her calling by helping those children both in her position as an advisor to Starfleet and as a counselor for the children, her experiences as a child and as an adult making her perfect for this role. 

And also perfect as a mother. Niana had trusted nobody and wouldn’t even let anybody touch her or her little sister, who had been only five at that time, while Niana was barely nine. She had been labeled aggressive and had experienced the brunt of abuse for both her and her sister. When Starfleet rescued them, they thought it would be impossible for her to ever trust anyone enough to be adoptable so they brought them into a foster home and were prepared to leave them be. 

But Seven had an immediate bond with Niana. When they went to the foster home, they didn’t know much about the conditions or the severity of the problem, but Seven immediately saw herself in the children, especially in Niana. This had been her a few years ago, frightened, alone, cut off from everything she thought was her reality. 

Kathryn knew that this was an important step for her, that helping Niana and all children like her was one more step to reclaiming her individuality, her life. After only a few short weeks they took Niana and Faro home. It had been incredible to see how much the girls blossomed once they knew for sure that they were truly free, that they could truly be themselves. 

Niana discovered her love for the written word and for writing herself and she would spend hours working on her stories. When she deemed them good enough, she gave them to Seven to read, knowing that she would give them a truly honest and well thought out review. Then, after corrections and more proof reading, she would actually deem them finished and do a reading for the whole family.

Tiasa, who was now six, the same age as Alex, had come to the family under similar circumstances a year ago, and she had brought a little furry friend she had been hiding from her abusive family. Though Kathryn had always been more of a dog person, she agreed that this little feline addition to the family had brought all of them joy – amidst a lot of destruction, but it was done by a ridiculously cute culprit, so all of them tended to forgive and forget very fast. 

So when a nearby shelter put up an add saying that they had gotten a whole bunch of kittens from a smuggler who kept them in abhorrent conditions, they all agreed that the family could do with one more addition. 

That had been yesterday, and the little kitty that had been christened ‘Aldo’ by the girls, who had been going about naming her in a very serious manner, holding a poll and anonymous voting and everything, had been living up to what the family already knew, that kittens were the cutest but also the most evil. 

Kathryn had been immersed in her thoughts and also finally in her report and only looked up again now because the absence of any giggles or squees was getting noticeable. The image she saw when she looked over to where Seven and the girls were sitting was the most adorable: all three girls were sitting with open mouths and rapt attention while the little kitty was sitting on Seven’s shoulder and seemed to be in a stare contest with her, probably to determine whether her head was a good place to sit or not. 

Kathryn smiled broadly and watched with as much fascination as the girls. After about half a minute, the kitten seemed to have decided that this was not a fight she could possibly win, meowed softly and jumped off of Seven’s shoulder, just to immediately jump on to Alex’s head, which seemed to have become her go to place. Everyone’s tension erupted in loud laughter and Kathryn’s heart swell over from happiness, just like every time she saw Seven and her daughters like this, carefree, happy, playing, laughing. 

They finally were themselves and that more than anything, meant the world for Kathryn. To have her family around her, to know that they were happy and could finally be who they actually were without fear, without restriction.


End file.
